UK introduced a bill on the supervision of digital life of citizens

Home Secretary Theresa May presents the proposals of the government

The UK government has published a draft draft on monitoring in digital communications. 299 document was submitted by Teresa May , Minister of the Ministry of the Interior at a meeting of Parliament. One of the proposed innovations is the legalization of interception of electronic messages of users. The government describes this as "the ability of intelligence services and law enforcement agencies to work with online communications of terrorists, peodfilov and other criminals."

Earlier it was reported that the government is going to ban data encryption in general, but the reality turned out to be slightly better. According to the same May, the new law "will provide the strongest encryption and security than anywhere else in the democratic world, and will also set new standards for openness, transparency and surveillance." As for observation, everything is confirmed: in a new bill, telecommunications companies are obliged to store data on any site that was visited by a UK resident for a year - there have already been similar proposals before, but bills with them have never been heard.

Police and intelligence agencies will need to get permission to view user data. If permission is obtained, the police will be able to see which sites a particular user has visited. However, the user's search history on the same site remains unavailable to law enforcement. It will also be impossible to see which pages the user visited. For example, the police will be able to find out that the person opened the site www.businessinsider.com , but will not be able to find out which pages of the site this person visited or what he was looking for on the site.
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A special body of the Investigatory Powers Commission will also be created, whose members will be judges. This body will be able to stop the actions of intelligence services even if the operation was approved by the Secretary of the Interior of the United Kingdom. In some cases, if anyone’s life is threatened, the Minister of the Interior will be able to approve the interception of data without the approval of the judicial authority.

Invasion or privacy?

Supporters of privacy believe that the new requirements for storing user data are strengthening the position of the special services.

According to the head of the organization Big Brother Watch, the ability to query the history of visiting sites from the special services, the government is an interference with the user's personal life. Plus, the representative of the organization believes that providing access to the authorities to the encrypted data is, in fact, the creation of legitimate backdoors for the authorities.

So far, the bill is nothing but a collection of proposals. But all these ideas can be implemented after the government votes on all positions in the next year.

Encryption

Earlier, The Telegraph journalist suggested that the government would look for a way to prohibit the type of encryption when only the sender and the recipient can decrypt the data. However, nothing of the kind happened - the legislation in this area has remained the same.

Attitudes of citizens

In January of this year, the results of a study on the attitude of British citizens to government oversight were published . As it turned out, 53% of respondents supported the government.

In addition, another 63% trust intelligence services, and believe that these bodies are doing everything right. 29% of respondents do not trust intelligence services.